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Singapore, December 6, 2012 – Red Dot Ventures, a VC firm targeting early stage technology ventures, partnered with Lithan Hall Academy, a 4-year Edutrust certified specialist education provider, to launch a Technopreneurship "work integrated learning" program. Developed with WDA, the Technopreneurship program is aligned to the National Infocomm Competency Framework (NICF). Known as "NICF – Diploma in Infocomm Sales and Marketing", the program aims to develop technopreneurs and entrepreneurial managers for the Infocomm technology (ICT) sector.

Based on an NTU study that included a survey of over 10,000 NTU students, 8% sought an entrepreneurship job that involved starting a business. Furthermore, of the 71% who want to pursue a "professional" job, 38% thought they had potentially viable business ideas. That's about 35% of the students surveyed who would have gone for entrepreneurship paths if they only had the knowledge and the early exposure to a business enterprise.

According to SPRING, one of the biggest challenges SMEs face is the lack of good business leaders across all levels who can lead their companies to seize opportunities. Singapore's growth-oriented enterprises need to build their management team fast or its ability to enter new markets, develop new products, and seize new business opportunities, will be hindered. Unfortunately, most SME's and startup companies lack the time and the financial resources to recruit and train their business leaders.

"I changed two jobs within a short period of ten months after my graduation from university. I was eager to learn as much as I could and would quit whenever my employer could no longer expose me to new learning opportunities. After my second job, I realized that a large company will always pigeon hole me to a specific job role. I thought that by starting my own business, it would provide me the best platform to learn." says Leslie Loh, Managing Director of Red Dot Ventures. "Looking back, the best thing about starting my own business at that early age was that it provided me with the best learning platform that shaped my entrepreneurial attributes and gave me the multidisciplinary skills I needed to scale my business. I believe entrepreneurship attributes and skills can be learned. I hope this program, which I have personally designed, will help develop more entrepreneurial talents to support our start-ups and SME ecosystem. "

A work integrated learning program that deliver a structured training program to acquire multidisciplinary skills under an entrepreneurial working environment in a start-up or SME would provide the platform that enable participants to shape their entrepreneurial attributes and acquire practical knowledge they need to pursue their path as a technopreneur.

"What's exciting about this Technopreneurship program is that participants will acquire all the practical knowledge and skills in sales, marketing, product and business management they need while practicing what they learn in a real-life technology venture." says Raja Chowdhury, Academic Head of Lithan Hall Academy."They will also work on a Capstone Project, with full senior management backing and mentorship from the company CEO, while being fully-employed at their respective sponsoring companies."

"Participating companies, who sponsor qualified candidates to this program, either by enrolling their own staff for training or recruiting from the pool of entrepreneurial program candidates, can get significant course fee funding support from WDA. They will also get additional support through WDA's IGNITE program." says Krishna Ramoo, COO of Lithan Hall Academy. "So they get to hire the best talents to form part of their entrepreneurial team and train them for high productivity at a very low cost."